


The Girl Who Loved the Moon

by sephmeadowes



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fairytale elements, Original Characters - Freeform, Short Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22601455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sephmeadowes/pseuds/sephmeadowes
Summary: A fairy tale about a girl fell in love with a boy she could never have.
Kudos: 1





	The Girl Who Loved the Moon

There was once a little girl who lived on a large estate. The Lidell estate was large by any modern individual's standards with forests surrounding the creaky, old manor house as if to hide it from the rapidly changing new world. It was a small pocket in time consisting of relics and antiques hoarded by the Lidell family's forbearers over the centuries. Everything was aged and trapped in its own obsolete, dusty glass case, even little Isla. Named after her great-grandmother Isabella, who had been sensible and poised and everything little Isla refused to be, she was old by blood if nothing else.

When not shipped off to boarding schools like some unwanted creature, Isla was running around the vast grounds of her family home, trying to discover every secret hidden in each tree hollow and carving on faded walls. This was how she met him. Grass stains on her socks and her dark bangs clinging to her wet forehead, she saw the boy wearing the grey cloak. His skin was almost translucent, the skin so pale you could see the little veins underneath his skin, his eyes the color of the sky before storms. The only color on this ghost was his black hair.

"I'm Echo," He spoke barely above a whisper but it seemed to silence the forest as if to hold its breath for the moment. "And you are?"

She replied with the innocence and daring of youth, "Isla."

He asked her to run away with him. He said it was to another world. It was not, however, to the encroaching modern world beyond the woods. She'd laughed when he told her, "To the moon."

"You can't live on the moon,"

"But you can,"

He offered her his hand. He was not quite ghost or boy. Other, her old blood said. Still, she could not name it.

She left with him anyway in a flurry of light and weightlessness. Flying to the moon, above the ancient manor, the only world she'd ever known. And he gripped her hand in his and told her to think happy thoughts. And the moon, she would never forget the glowing paradise within.

Echo's home was a grey castle in a silver forest surrounded by a white gold ocean. Lonely Echo had this little heaven to himself and now she was there to keep him company forever. And Isla had loved it there with all her being. They were ghosts no longer.

Time passed even in magical worlds. And Isla was not quite so little anymore. Echo aged at a much different rate, starting each moon cycle as a boy whom she played with. He was an adolescent at the middle, same as she, and the pains of youth would show itself with clumsy camaraderie. And a man he would be at the end with the detachment of grown-ups.

And time continued to move and she was as grown-up as he was. For each cycle, she played three roles for him. She would be first as his mother, second as his friend, and third as a mystery. Adolescence had been difficult when she couldn't help but stare at the Other in him and want him with the ferocity of wanting something you couldn't have. As a grown-up, without the excuse and naiveté of being a child, it was cruel.

As a man, he was too handsome to bear. His skin would always be pale but his eyes were bright against his dark hair and she had never loved anyone else. She would never love anyone else and he knew this and still did nothing. Bitterness and anger could taste the same.

"Why?" She asked. "Why did you take me away?"

"I didn't want to be alone anymore," He smiled sadly. "No one looks at the moon."

"I did."

He nodded, "Still do."

"And that is all I am destined to do? Stare and wonder?"

He shook his head and stepped away.

"I cannot give you what you want. I am unable to become it."

If anger tasted like bitterness, than heartbreak tasted like regret and sorrow. And that dreaded word she couldn't speak it tasted like all of it. They were ghosts who couldn't even say the world. She was the stupid girl who fell in love with the inhuman boy.

"You're cruel and selfish," She pointed out, stepping closer. "This is your fault."

"I'm sorry," He said sincerely and did not move away. "If I were to become what you are, I would only live a day and die. That is what you are asking me to do."

"I never asked you to die," She let out a sigh through the tears threatening to escape. "I want you to live."

He wiped away a tear that escaped her eyes. "Same thing,"

And with that as her goodbye, she left the moon and went back to the old manor. The forest had tried to take it over by this time. The last of her blood having left for the always waiting modern world around them and she stayed with the relics. She would watch the moon until she too was grey and silver.

She could almost hear the forest calling for her. It called with the same song we'll all hear someday. She has no fear as she never learned it. And when a man arrived, she smiled and said, "You took your time."

He returned her smile.

"I have come to live."


End file.
